There are commonly situations where multiple individuals' laundry needs to be laundered together in a single load. In such situations, it is necessary to keep each individual's laundry separated from the other individuals' laundry. Additionally, often times an individual has several items, such as socks, caps, gloves and the like, without slots or openings that must be laundered. Several different devices have been used to accomplish this goal, each having its own limitations and deficiencies. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,551,128 to Townsend discloses a laundry device with two fixed-dimension laundry devices, one for clothing items and another for socks and the like. However, this sock holding device is difficult to use when a large number of socks are to be washed, or when only one or a few pairs of lightweight socks are to be washed, because the device cannot be adequately adjusted. Additionally, this device requires that a significant area of socks and the like to remain enclosed by the device, minimizing its effectiveness in both washing and drying the enclosed garments. Another laundry device is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,038,748 to Peggy R. Durney and Michael J. Durney, the entire disclosure of which is herein incorporated by reference. In that invention, the laundry device included a sock snare attached to the main belt that included two cords and a threaded cord lock fastener connecting the two cords. Socks could be inserted between the cords and then cinched together using the cordlock fastener. However, the sock snare is effective only when one or two pairs of socks are placed in the sock snare as the socks fail to get adequately cleaned and/or dried when more than two pairs of socks are cinched together.
It is also not uncommon for clothing items, such as socks, caps, gloves and the like to become lost or mismatched during the laundering process, even when laundering only a single individual's clothing at home. Various devices have previously been designed in an effort to prevent this problem. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,389,657 to Darlyn C. Turner and U.S. Pat. No. 7,631,753 to Thomas G. Temmel each disclose respective sock laundering devices for holding pairs of socks together using clips. However, similar to the laundering devices described above, each of these designs have been ineffective and inefficient.
In view of the foregoing, what is needed is a laundry holder for socks and the like which is efficient and easy to use for at-home use, when a single individual's clothing is laundered, and when multiple individuals' clothing are laundered at once. Further, a laundry holder for socks, cap, gloves or other lightweight clothing items, is needed that can effectively, during the washing and drying thereof, hold and separate several pairs of socks and/or shirts, underwear and the like while keeping an individual's laundry separate from other individuals' laundry during the washing and drying process.